Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments
Why are people so afraid to enjoy the Ohio State win?
I said in another post our fanbase has developed Stockholm syndrome. I was being cute, but the more this sort of talk goes on, the more I think we really have developed such a crushing inferiority complex from years of narrowly losing the big game that some fans just can't handle the big win. Which is really sad to see, because I developed my love of VT football through the David and Goliath wins that built the program. Here's hoping the current staff gets us back to playing our best in our biggest games.
Moves more like MC Hammer if you ask me.
Yes, but a bowl bid still requires no worse than a 6-6 season, so a bowl streak also implies a streak of winning seasons (so long as you win your bowl in 6-6 years). Remaining on the net plus side in your record does matter for something. Like when our coaches are out recruiting and our competition is telling recruits that our program is down, our coaches can say maybe, but you're coming to a program that still wins even in down years.
Yeah I think I'm doing a really craptastic job articulating my position. I am not one of those guys who thinks the ten win streak was meaningless, and I don't think the bowl streak is meaningless. I'm coming across as more of a curmudgeon than I mean to here. All that stuff is important, builds a program, brings prestige, influences recruits, etc. We need that.
I'm saying I take pride in those accomplishments, but goal one year in and year out is win the Coastal. Those other milestones are either icing on the cake when we win the Coastal, and "salvage the season" type accomplishments when we don't.
Yeah, up above in my first comment on this I almost put that I'd rather have an 8-4 season and win Coastal than a 10-2 season, but then I thought, what are the realistic chances of finishing 8-4 and winning the division.
Before anyone pounces, I know we've done it. But I think it's less likely today, now that Duke has improved and BC has found themselves a good coach. The late 2000s mediocrity has faded a bit. The Coastal winner is gonna have 9 or 10 wins most seasons.
My point is, 10 wins doesn't make up for not winning the division. Not that we should burn it down or call for any firings or any of that, I just mean if we don't make the ACCCG, we've fallen short of our primary goal. Ten wins is nice, but I don't think we should ever use that to brush failing to win the Coastal under the rug in any given season.
This brings up the question of what constitutes bulletin board material. As far as that goes, nothing above makes the cut in my book.
Pointing out that we were the only team to beat an OSU this season isn't going to remind any Buckeyes of that fact. Trust me, they remember. Nobody on the team is even saying we're going to win next year. The closest is JCC's exclamation that they come to Lane next season, but even then, that's just excitement for a huge home game.
It'd be a bit of a bitch ass move to try not to shake the boat for fear of mighty some Ohio state university or another. We respect them, but we aren't scared of them. We punched them in the mouth in their house, and our guys are winding up to try to do it again when they come to ours.
TBH, I might be the guy in a VT shirt in the back of a squad car.
He's gonna break a punt return wide open soon. You can just feel it.
This is tragic. Stuart was always genuine class. He along with SVP and Chris Fowler were my favorite ESPN personalities. Irreplaceable.
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11 years 6 months
# | Bitter blog - Babcock expects entire football coaching staff to be back in 2015 I know Whit and Frank are still feeling each other out, but I get a growing sense that Whit is motivating Frank, not in the sense of being worried about a new AD but in terms of Whit's obvious desire to elevate the program being infectious. There's obviously a culture change happening within VT athletics, and the more I hear Whit talk about his interactions with Frank, the more I think Frank is getting energized by it.
No, but it should always be our goal, and our first parameter of defining a successful season.
Look for me. I'll be the guy wearing a Virginia Tech shirt.
Hall of fame caliber post right here. Taking the pulse of the fanbase.
Some people never enjoy it. Hell, man, just listen to Finebaum after a Bammer loss. These people are following a quasi-NFL team and they're miserable.
Being a fan of VT football can be exasperating at times, especially when we play down to the level of our competition. But there have been so many great moments over the last 18 seasons of Hokie football in my life, and that's what I remember and choose to focus on.
I would agree, a bowl streak is a valuable thing to a program because it also is a streak of above-.500 seasons (assuming you win your bowl in seasons like this where you finish 6-6). It says a lot that even while a program is down, you're still netting s winning record.
10-win seasons are in similarly beneficial to a program, just amped up to the next level. They're matters of prestige and selling points for a program.
My original point was that I'd rather have an ACCCG appearance than a 10 win season. Winning the Coastal should be our number one goal every season. A number of wins should be secondary.
Not a chance in hell.
If we beat OSU again on Labor Day, I'm tracking your ass down and buying you a drink.
Because I'm classy like that.
Welcome to the board. Have a leg to get you started.
You raise a very interesting point about parallels to the JMU loss at Lane. However, I don't think it's a particularly accurate comparison for a couple of reasons. In 2010, VT was coming off a crushing late loss to Boise State on the road (neutral site, but still a travel game) and then played JMU five days later. In many ways, it was a perfect shitstorm that culminated in a very good FCS team being the better team on Worsham Field that day. However, I do believe VT plays JMU 100 times, VT wins 98 or 99 of them. I might be a Hokie homer in that opinion, but my point is there were significant extenuating factors that played into the JMU loss that were absent in the OSU game.
- OSU did not play a marquee opponent prior to us. Navy, while no pushover, is still a midmajor.
- OSU was not playing on short rest.
- OSU spent the majority of the offseason preparing for the VT game, not the Navy game.
Still, an interesting comparison. Kudos.
As for your final points, "kick the shit out of" is a subjective term. Granted, it's usually reserved for 62-0 drubbings, but I'll explain why I use it to describe the outcome of the OSU game.
- We never trailed.
- Bud Foster held OSU to 182 fewer yards and 23 fewer points than they averaged over the season.
- We sacked the OSU QB seven times and intercepted him three times.
- We held a seven minute advantage in TOP.
- In general, we played Virginia Tech football from start to finish. We dominated that game more than the final score indicates.
And as for the record books, without looking it up, who won the BCS championship in 2009? I know some people out there are going to know it right off the top of their heads, but in general the people who remember it are the fans of the program that won it, and the fans of the program that lost that game. Hats off to OSU if they beat Oregon, and I hope they do. But I'll take the trivia question.
This is where we shake hands and walk away, dude. I got nothing left to say to you.
Just gonna throw this out there. With Bud just recentlycommenting about how he and Torian are tinkering with a three down linemen package, anyone else think Settle is custom made to be the nose tackle in that look?
The number of wins is irrelevant to me if we don't win the Coastal. I got tired of how much we hung on the ten win season streak. A ten win season is a feel good moment, but there were a couple of times we spun it to try to make up for losing the division. I personally would take 9-3 and Coastal champions than 10-2 and an also ran. To me the definition of success starts with winning the Coastal. No record can make up for not accomplishing that.
I just rewatched the game last night, actually, and what I saw was blanket coverage by our DBs taking away catch after catch from their receivers eventually getting into those receivers' heads and taking them out of their game, forcing mental errors, and coupled with a pass rush that harassed their QB all night, in general preventing them from getting into any offensive rhythm all night. It was the classic psychological warfare that is a staple of Bud Foster defense, and it shut down an offense that would immediately turn around and post 50+ a game for the next four games.
So your whole basis for believing they are significantly better on offense than when we played them is, in a nutshell, "We can't possible beat a team that's good enough to play for a national championship."
Don't want to put words in your mouth so please, if I'm misjudging your argument, here's your chance to correct me.
And I'm just saying when you're being called to lay any evidence on the table to back up your opinion, you're just calling the people who disagree with you irrational and trotting out a veiled version of the transitive property of football.
Were we on his radar?
And why were the receivers dropping passes? Because our DBs were draped all over them all game, getting in their heads and taking them out of their games. And they were dropping them because our pass rush was destroying their QB, leading to bad, inaccurate throws. As for missing tackles, I just rewatched the game last night. I did not see a ton of missed tackles. What I saw was getting our playmakers in space through Lefty's scheme. By and large, their defenders made the tackles when they were in position.
But basically what you're saying is, they weren't as good then because we beat them. And yet, as has been pointed out time, and time, and time again, is that there is no data whatsoever to support the claim that their offense improved gradually throughout the rest of the season. They were firing on all cylinders the very next week and continued at that level for the rest of the season. Now if you want to argue that their confidence as a team grew with each successive win, that's one argument, but that's not the same thing as being better. And I still say, you put Foster's defense up against that offense today, Foster shuts them down again. I have no reason at all to think it doesn't happen again.
I will say, though, I love his ability to adjust to the ball in the air and make the catch in position to get some YAC. Shows good vision and ability to locate the ball.
Like in the first video when he went up and caught the ball at the highest point. The CB fell down but Kumah landed on his feet and kept running. You don't see that very often, and with a later adjustment to the ball that doesn't happen.
I really like this kid.